LONG BLOG

Here's an unusuals news story that I did drop this in the Destructoid story tips email about a week ago but I'm guessing it was buried due to Thanks giving etc but it's something I think should be covered even if it's just by me in a C-blog.

This story oricially comes from Youtuber Ozzie Arcane who brought it up in part in his follow up video on the game Second Chance Heroes. Here's the video for those of you who want to watch it.

All the potential trouble revolves around a game that's not even for sale on Steam anymore but because of Steams systems etc it's still on Steam for those who own it. The game in question is Second Chance Heroes and all of this story begins long after the game was dead. Ozzie Arcane who was making a video on dead games for his channel (this video) noticed a patch had been put out for the game and mentioned it on the Steam forums for the game. This Ignited talk that the game might be getting revived.

A pastebin apparently popped up somewhere claiming the game was coming back and giving out some codes for the game.

However some users started noticing that the update was triggering antivirus alerts with anti virus sites suggesting that the detected thing was either a trojan or a bitcoin mining application.

This concern was then compounded when a former developer showed up and said while they're not in regular contact with the rest of the team they hadn't heard anything about new updates. Then the lead level designer turned up and also said they suspected the pastebin post was fake and not by an actual developer. Other developers also then followed to say they weren't aware of any updates planned.

Finally a developer who was part of the company that owned the game turned up and said that the company behind the game had been dissolved and the update definitely wasn't an official one. Said developer then logged into the Admin account for the game and deleted the bogus patch that had been getting sent out.

And that's where this story ends. What the bogus update truly did may never be known, was it a trojan or was it some attempt to turn other peoples computers into part of a bitcoin mining operation? Who put out the update also may never be known and how they managed to get the ability to put out the update also may never be known. The Youtube channel itself that had the pastebin linked has deleted the pastebin with the links and closed all the easy means to message or contact them other than commenting on a video and hoping for a reply. So if you own any dead games on Steam just be on the lookout in case whoever did this strikes again in a different title in the future.